Bilbo Baggins

Narrative Role and Significance

Bilbo Baggins is the originating figure of The Lord of the Rings and its closing witness. His eleventy-first birthday party and his disappearance open the narrative, and his gift of the Ring to Frodo, sealed in an envelope addressed to his young cousin, is the act that passes the burden of the quest to the next generation. His story is braided with Gollum's through the Ring's history, and his own escape from the Ring's hold stands in implicit contrast to Sméagol's destruction by it, a contrast Gandalf makes explicit when he says the sad story of Gollum might have happened to others, even to some hobbits that he has known. In his old age at Rivendell, surrounded by papers and falling asleep over the tales of his friends' adventures, Bilbo embodies the long defeat and the quiet survival of those who have carried great burdens and laid them down. His final words about the wedding of Aragorn, with their gentle evasion of the journey he has waited for long enough, prepare the way for his own departure from the Grey Havens, the last of the Ring-bearers to leave Middle-earth, and close the circle that his party opened.